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Center for Economic Policy Analysis Center for Economic Policy Analysis

Center for Economic Policy Analysis at UC San Diego:
Initiative on Affordable Housing

  1. HOME
  2. Research Initiatives
  3. Affordable Housing

Research Affiliates

Judson Boomhower
Assistant Professor
Jeffrey Clemens
Jeffrey Clemens
Associate Professor
Julie Cullen
Julie Cullen
Professor

 

Fabian Eckert
Fabian Eckert
Assistant Professor
Philip Hoxie
Philip Hoxie
Graduate Student

About the Initiative on Affordable Housing

The (in)affordability of housing has emerged as an issue of pressing national concern. Since 2010, the prices of new and old homes have grown, respectively, at twice and three times the rate of overall consumer price inflation. Housing costs thus account for increasingly large shares of a typical household’s budget, a development that has had particularly heavy bite for households with low incomes. The slow pace of new housing construction, which remains below levels that regularly prevailed before the late-2000s housing bust, is a clear culprit. Indeed, cross-market comparisons reveal that low-rates of new-home construction strongly predict higher prices. Dysfunctional markets for homeowners’ insurance have added to these problems in markets impacted by wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.

Against this backdrop, there is a need for robust research on issues including:

  • How state- or local-led permitting reforms impact the supply of housing units.
  • How reforms that impact the supply of housing units impact housing affordability. 
  • How insurance regulations impact where housing construction takes place and how communities rebuild after natural disasters. 
  • How housing affordability interacts with the provision of local public goods and services, such as school quality. 
  • How housing affordability affects the prevalence of homelessness. (For additional UC San Diego research on this and related issues, we are happy to refer visitors to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning’s Homelessness Hub.)

Seed Funding

CEPA’s Research Initiative on Affordable Housing is made possible by a generous grant from Arnold Ventures. The Arnold Ventures grant is jump starting our Affordable Housing research agenda by enabling the purchase of a department-wide license for access to detailed data on property valuations. These data will support research on a rich set of housing-related projects by both faculty and graduate students. We are grateful to Arnold Ventures for its generous support.

Ongoing Projects

  • Judson Boomhower is working to extend his research on the economic impacts of natural disasters by investigating the distribution of structures impacted by wildfires and the pace at which homes are rebuilt. 

  • Clemence Idoux is assessing how school quality is capitalized into home values by analyzing policy changes in Seattle school catchment areas. 

  • Philip Hoxie and Gabriel Canedo Riedel are evaluating how by-right permitting reforms have impacted permitting activity, land values, and neighborhood spillovers from Accessory Dwelling Unit construction in California.  Philip Hoxie has previously published research in the Journal of Public Economics on the rising extent to which high housing costs discourage the mobility of all but the most educated households to high productivity regions.